The Kewpee

Once upon a crazy year, while I fretted and cried into my beer, 

Over many a bleak and troubling story in the news-

As I trembled, nearly crapping, over politicians scrapping, 

I heard the crinkling of wrapping, wrapping like fast food joints use. 

“‘I am hearing things,” I muttered, ”Because of my anxiety and booze.”

I laid down to try to snooze. 

I was as blue as Papa Smurf or Grover, it was early in the cool October;

The year’s plans collapsed like Clarence Oveur after a fish dinner he did choose.

I tried in vain to relive the past; when chain breaking was a blast, 

My silly road trips unsurpassed, until the world turned into number twos,  

In the second year of my life with two zeroes and two twos, 

More off-putting than Ted Cruz.

And the constant, sad, uncertain stream of each news story

Distressed me-depressed me with panic worse than strenuous flus;

So that now to slow the dread, I mumbled prostrate from my bed

“‘Tis but leaves in the yard beneath some passing shoes-

Some jerk in my yard in passing shoes;-

I realized it was no time to snooze. 

Presently, I grew alerter paranoid from news of murder,

“Sir” said I, “or Madam, you of trespass I accuse!

The fact is I am close to snapping! You crinkle like a burger’s wrapping!

Show yourself and take a slapping! Slapping is the attack I choose!

I am built like Terry Crews!”

Into the night, I started staring, long I strained my eyes, hardly bearing,

The constant dry and crackling rustle that never lessens nor subdues;

The growing noise only stoked my fear as its source remained unclear,

And the only words there to hear was the phrase “Drive Throughs?”

This I sighed, and an echo groaned back the phrase, “Drive Throughs.”

I handled the truth worse than Tom Cruise. 

   Back onto my mattress falling, pretending I didn’t hear the calling,

Soon again though, came the flapping, now a sound that I could not confuse. 

“Clearly,” said I, “Clearly it’s a wrapper encrusted with dried-out lettuce;

Let me see, then, what the threat is, as I go to find refuse-

Let my mind be calm a moment as I go to seek refuse;”

I got up to look for clues.

Onward then I turned the lighting, when amid a sudden brightening,

Therein stood a creepy Kewpee wearing no shirt, pants, nor shoes;

Not the least attention it showed toward me, but for a hat, no clothing wore she;

Unsettling as the art of Edward Gorey, the Kewpee stood for burgers I could not refuse-

Printed on a Styrofom chalice, near the other cups that once amused-

A hallucination I failed to disabuse.

This unclad toddler forced my gloom to the forefront in my lighted room,

With its culinary toque and the spatula it used,

“Though you stand for burgers and fries,” I said, “you fail to appetize,

Naked pasty baby thighs forced obscure by Wendy’s ruse-

Tell me why I find myself nervous and confused!”

Quoth the Kewpee “Breaking News!”

I was surprised this cartoon baby could hear my inquiry so plainly, 

It’s reply a phrase I wish I my brain could lose,

For I cannot help but hearing, into my slipping sanity searing, 

Those two words signalling new situations to defuse

Kewpee cup harbinger of society eviler than Minions and their Grus.

With a proclamation of breaking news.

But the Kewpee blushing plainly on the flaccid cup, spoke only

Those two words, as if from the grail those two words did slowly ooze, 

Nothing further then it mumbled-as I shuddered, twitched, and stumbled

Until when I finally grumbled “My mind has likely blown a fuse-

In the morning, I’ll feel better, despite the blown brain fuse.”

Then the Kewpee said “Breaking News.”

   Flustered by the interruption and by the cartoon baby’s chilling gumption,

“Clearly,” said I, “what it says is nothing but a blatant ruse

Prompted by some depraved trickster to scramble my mind up like a mixer.”

I took a gulp of of my elixir- one of Milwaukee’s finest brews-

But the TV in my room bore that melancholy bruise,

A Chiron screaming “Breaking News!”

    But the Kewpee still unsettling, my addled nerves in need of fettling,

Down I plopped a bean bag chair in front of the Kewpee and the other cups in slews;

There upon the vinyl sweating, I betook myself to fretting

Worry begetting worry, betting that the Kewpee was following cues-

Who could feed this cutesy, nude chef-child corporate mascot cues?

To alert me to ever-more breaking news?

This I thought there, speculating, but not a word I considered stating, 

To the child whose cartoon eyes began to pierce like screws;

That and more I laid deciphering before the Kewpee in need of diapering

On the bean bag’s synthetic fibering that always smelled of Krazy Glues

And whose carcinogenic liner-ing smelling of ever-Krazier Glues

Was once the subject of, ah, Breaking News!

Slowly then, the air grew smelly, perfumed by my gassy belly

Loaded with burrito cannonballs, and a couple beers to light the fuse.

“Cup!” I cried, “Polystyrene soda silo, that I brought home from Ohio

Lay off-lay off and desist reminding me of the news;

Quaff, oh quaff this warm tall can and drown my fears in booze!”

Quoth the Kewpee “Breaking News.”

“Infant!” said I, “Discount Cupid!-much less weird if you were suited!-

Whether vile nightmare or whether you’re a product of my alcohol abuse, 

Your nudity you’ve casually flaunted, you disposable cup that’s clearly haunted-

Consider me now thoroughly taunted. Tell me as I sit before you bemused, 

Will there soon be a new normal? Will dining out again become my muse? 

Quoth the Kewpee “Breaking News!”

    “Mascot!” said I, “thing of marketing!-profit generating, appearance starkening!

By the state of Ohio below us-where I bought you with some foods-

As I sit with churning guts, tell me if in a few months, 

I shall inhabit a restaurant table, and eat food not from drive throughs-

Eat a burger, taco, chicken, fish not bought from drive throughs.”

Quoth the Kewpee “Breaking News!”

    “Those two words our sign of parting, Kewpee cup!” I yelled, while farting-

“Get thee back to Ohio with Rax Roast Beef and Cincinnati chili stews!

Leave no Styrofoam as evidence of your bad tidings of war and pestilence,

Leave me shaken in my residence! Leave my shelf, and follow my cues!

Take thy straw from out my brain, and from my life yourself recuse!”

Quoth the Kewpee, “Breaking News!”

And the Kewpee, never landing, still is standing, still is standing

On the flaccid Styrofoam chalice, in the environment it abused;

And its form has all the presence of a dark and evil essence,

Like a senator proclaiming, “My words against me you must use!”

As I pine for days gone by of wandering like Moses and the Jews

Put to a stop by breaking news!

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Dissimilar and Not Quite Extinct

This is a follow-up to my previous post Similar, but Legally Distinct. If you haven't read that post, consider going back and reading it before reading this one. 

Visiting multiple locations of a broken chain that still has more than one location can be immensely informative. Stops at different outlets of the same brand give you a more complete picture of the state of an endangered chain from a uniquely comprehensive perspective. My travels to every operating (G.D.) Ritzy’s showed how franchisees can vary in their day to day operations if left alone for a decade or two, plus how the chain founder’s vision can be modified to appeal to a modern audience. Visiting every remaining Rax (except one; I’m coming for you, Harlan, Kentucky Rax!) showed me how great (and not so great) a Rax experience can be. When I visited four Ponderosa Steakhouses in a single weekend, it became clear that the chain was in disarray, but my trip to the lone Bonanza Steak and BBQ showed that there was still a glimmer of hope for the Ponderosa-Bonanza brands. I have also long entertained fantasies of of taking a two week road trip to all 15 or so remaining Taco Ticos that are spread from Iowa to Louisiana with a large clump of locations in and around Wichita. It was with this mindset that I realized that when I visited the three Lima, Ohio Kewpee locations and a couple locations of the related Halo Burger chain, I wasn’t quite getting the full Kewpee experience.

Not long after I dined at the Lima, Ohio Kewpees, all of which have the same owner, I took a trip to Racine, Wisconsin to visit the last operating Red Barn. While researching Racine, I learned it was also home to another of the five remaining Kewpee locations, and that the fifth was less than two hours from me in Lansing, Michigan. Naturally, I visited the Racine Kewpee while I was in town, and I found my way to the Lansing Kewpee last week. The Kewpee chain hasn’t had any meaningful corporate support in close to fifty years and the Michigan and Wisconsin Kewpees have different owners than the Ohio locations. I was curious to see how close the experience was at the outlying Kewpees compared to the three Lima locations.

Kewpee, named for the then popular, but objectively creepy looking Kewpie doll figurines was founded in Flint, Michigan In 1923 and grew to 400 locations around the Great Lakes by the start of World War Two. The chain fell apart in the sixties when a new owner attempted and failed to impose a modern franchise agreement on the longtime owners of Kewpee restaurants. Kewpee was a favorite spot of a young Dave Thomas, and it heavily influenced Wendy’s which opened its first locations while Kewpee was in sharp decline.

A 1990s interpretation of the 1930s

During the two days Esmeralda Fitzmonster and I spent in Racine, Wisconsin, we didn’t really adjust to central time. We found ourselves ready for lunch at 10 AM on a weekday when we parked a couple blocks away from the Kewpee in downtown Racine, opting to walk the rest of the way. The building, according to roadarch.com, a 1997 recreation of its circa 1939 predecessor, was instantly recognizable from a block away thanks to its sign featuring a Kewpie doll, resembling a fully nude, crucified, pointy-headed infant. True to it’s design, the inside and outside of the structure looked older than its 21 years with its glazed bricks, porthole Windows, and low U-shaped counters. There’s a glass display case built into one wall at the rear of the dining area full of vintage Kewpie dolls. I made a point of not looking at, or getting near it. While the architecture was distinctive and felt appropriate for a brand with such a long history, it also bore no resemblance to the prewar Kewpee in downtown Lima nor its two 1960s vintage counterparts across town. 

I don't get how this sign is supposed to make people hungry. 

The food and service were also at odds with the Lima locations. Upon entering, the surprisingly crowded dining room, Esmeralda and I ordered at the register, received our orders wrapped to go, and sat down at the counter to eat. It was only then that we noticed that employees were taking other customer’s orders where they sat and bringing their food on plates. The Lima Keepees employ a more traditional fast food ordering system and do not offer table service, or plates other than plastic trays. 

Yes, I saved the wrapper, but I hate looking at it. 

I order up a burger with mustard, pickles, and onions, Dave Thomas’ preferred burger toppings, plus fries and a chocolate shake. Despite a half century of divergent evolution, the square, ragged-edged burger I received was functionally identical to the Kewpee burgers I’d experienced in Lima, and just as with the Lima Kewpee Burgers, it reminded me of Wendy’s original burgers more than a little bit. The culinary similarities began and ended there, however. The fries were crinkle cut, unlike the straight cut fries in Lima. Likewise, my chocolate shake was made of blended milk and ice cream, and tasted homemade, while the Lima Kewpees use a soft serve machine to dispense their Frosted Malts, a product that’s like a better version of a Wendy’s Frosty. Likewise the Racine Kewpee menu lacks the chili and freshly baked pies that are available in Lima, but does offer fish and chicken sandwiches that aren’t available at the Ohio Kewpees. Overall, the experience was perfectly pleasant aside from the decor, but if you remove the Kewpee name and dolls, it didn’t feel terribly distinctive. 

Downtown Kewpee in the shadow Michigan's capitol.

It took me a while to visit the Lansing Kewpee, but a few days ago, I found my way there. It was late afternoon on a weekday, and like the Racine location, this Kewpee was downtown. I parked a couple of blocks away, took a moment to admire Michigan's Capitol building, which was directly in front of me, then made my way down the street to the Kewpee. It's the only non freestanding Kewpee still open, housed in a short brick building crammed between taller buildings. There's a Yoga studio upstairs. People who look like they do yoga are filing in and out of the shared entryway as I walk in. I don't look like I do yoga. I look like I drive around and eat hamburgers.

Immediately upon entry, I'm met with a large red and white porcelain "Kewpee Hotel Hamburgs" sign, that looks to date from the early days of the Kewpee brand. A little research revealed that this location dates back to 1923, and is therefore the oldest Kewpee still in operation. The interior of the place with its exposed brick, arching alcoves, and tufted booths feels old and comfortable. The business is still run by the family of the original owner, and outside signage reads "Weston's Kewpee Restaurant." It feels like one of thousands of mom and pop burger places, which it essentially is. I doubt many of the regulars here know that Kewpee was ever a chain. Still, there are Kewpee artifacts here and there on the walls, mostly the same blue and white monochrome logo that's on the top of the menu. It's an odd time of day and the place is nearly empty. A sign near the door tells me to sit whereever I want. I oblige, and a waitress greets me at my table. I order a Diet Coke and review the paper menu. It's the most extensive Kewpee menu I've seen, with only a small section near the top devoted to hamburgers. Shakes are nowhere to be found, but this Kewpee is true to the chain's Michigan roots. 

You have to flip the menu over to get to the burgers.

The likelihood of encountering green olives on a hamburger increases dramatically the further west one travels in Michigan, and I suspect the Flint-born Kewpee was slinging olive burgers from the very beginning. The Lima Kewpees, which dress each burger to order, offer green olives as a topping option. Halo Burger, which is a descendant of Kewpee also has an olive burger on the menu. While green olives were conspicuously absent from the Racine Kewpee, they're prominently featured on the burgers of the lone remaining Michigan Kewpee. Three different topping options and patty sizes work out to nine different burgers being present on the menu at Weston's Kewpee. When my waitress returns with my drink, I order up the mid sized King Deluxe which comes topped with olive sauce, lettuce, and tomato. She warns me that it has olives on it, expressing concern that I was expecting something akin to a Whopper. If only she knew I've forced myself to consume olive burgers repeatedly to the point of almost enjoying them. 

Historic burger on a trendy bun with a side of middle school cafeteria fries

My order came up quickly, and the first thing I noticed was the brioche bun. I suspect it to be a recent addition given the recent brioche fad and the fact that it's the first I've seen at any Kewpee. The olive sauce seems to be little more than a mixture of olives and mayonnaise, which is consistent with just about every other Michigan olive burger I've had. Despite the differences, the burger is a Kewpee hamburger where it matters, in the patty. It has the signature square shape with ragged edges and uniform thickness I've come to appreciate from the other four Kewpees. Despite the inconsistencies elsewhere, a Kewpee burger patty is perfectly consistent across five locations in three states that have been operating essentially independently since the early 1970s. The operators knew that it was that meat puck that made them successful, and tailored the rest of their businesses as needed over the years.

Meals at all five Kewpee locations gives a comprehensive frame of reference of what remains of the Kewpee brand. It's tough to say from my 21st century viewpoint which is the most authentic. Maybe they all are in their own way, or maybe none of them are. The Lima locations feel the most modern, frozen in an era when the Kewpee chain was struggling to remain relevant and adapt to the changing fast food landscape, yet they seem to offer the most authentic menu. The Lansing Kewpee has a storied atmosphere, and a long history, but the majority of its menu is a decided departure from the original Kewpee offerings, and the Racine location simply feels like a tribute to Kewpee, the burger joint equivalent of a cover band. Each has its own merits, and offers a pleasant, if inconsistent experience, but the blend of consistencies and inconsistencies is what makes these places interesting and worth travelling to in the first place. 

Similar, but Legally Distinct

I’m a sucker for a good local or regional restaurant chain, even when it doesn’t quite fit the Broken Chains theme. Brands like Taco John’s, Grand Traverse Pie Company, Shari’s, Tudor’s Biscuit World, and Skyline all lack a national presence, but are places I seek out when I travel. All are far too prosperous to be considered broken chains, so I’ve held off on writing about them here. Until recently I thought another favorite of mine, Halo Burger, with 11 locations mostly in and around Flint, Michigan was just another thriving local chain, but a little research revealed multiple connections that made me realize that while Halo Burger is not a broken chain itself, it’s definitely broken chain adjacent, and I feel that makes it appropriate to cover here.

Samuel V. Blair began selling hamburgers in Flint, Michigan in 1923. At the time, for reasons I’d rather not ponder, figurines of naked toddlers, known as Kewpie Dolls were popular. In an attempt capitalize on this popularity without paying any licensing fees, Blair named his hamburger stand “Kewpee Hotel Hamburgs” Note the similar, but legally distinct spelling of Kewpie. Blair expanded his business rapidly over the next two decades, peaking at around 400 locations around the American side of the Great Lakes in the early 1940s. Signage and packages featured a figure that was similar to, but legally distinct from, the chain’s sort of namesake Kewpie Doll.

Samuel Blair retired in 1944, but the Kewpee chain continued with operators paying regular flat royalty fees to Blair and later his estate after his death. Blair’s Flint, Michigan Kewpee restaurants were purchased by Bill Thomas in 1958. Meanwhile, the rights to the Kewpee name and licensing were purchased by Ed Adams, who ran the Kewpee locations in Toledo, Ohio.

Adams sought to modernize the Kewpee business model and demanded Kewpee operators sign a full franchise agreement and pay him a portion of the profits from their restaurants. Predictably, Kewpee operators changed the name of their restaurants, drastically altered their menus, and/or closed, all in the name of avoiding being forced into a franchise agreement. Bill Thomas’ response to Ed Adams was to break ties with Kewpee, and change the name of his restaurants to Halo Burger. Thus, Flint, Michigan, the city where Kewpee was born, suddenly found itself without any Kewpee locations.

Thomas took the Kewpee burger off the menu at Halo burger, and replaced it with the similar but legally distinct Q P burger (Note the second similar, but legally distinct spelling of “Kewpie”) and the chain began to evolve further from Kewpee, establishing its own brand identity, including unique buildings, signage, and new menu items including a Michigan olive burger.

In addition to the Halo Burger locations operating in Michigan, there are still five Kewpees open for business, three of which are in Lima, Ohio, less than half a day’s drive from Flint. Upon piecing this information together, I exclaimed, “Road trip!” to no one in particular, and set off to experience both Kewpee and Halo burger back to back.

I opted to visit the restaurants in reverse chronological order, heading to the Halo Burger locations in Flint first, mainly because I wanted to visit what seems to be Halo Burger’s flagship location in Downtown Flint, and it closes at 2 PM on weekends. The Downtown Flint Halo burger is located at the corner of Fourth and Saginaw streets, in a historic building that was once a Vernor’s Ginger Ale branded sandwich shop. Vernor’s is a big deal in Michigan. There’s still a massive Vernor’s themed mural on the side of the building next door featuring gnomes toting barrels of ginger ale. I park in the little lot next to the mural and walk in the door.

The original Kewpee/Halo location in Flint is long gone, but this seems to be the oldest operating Halo Burger location, having been open since the late fifties in a building that I would estimate dates back to the twenties. Upon entering the lobby, I’m struck by how much of the original architecture is left intact. The ceilings are high and the light fixtures and floors are original. There are ornate arches high above the food prep area. It’s early, and there’s no one else here. I order and my food comes up quickly. I take my tray back to the seating area which is in a room behind the main lobby. It’s nothing special with its old blue naugahyde booths, drop ceiling, and plain walls. It feels like an aging Arby’s in need of renovation, quite a contrast in comparison to the ornate room with the order counter. I pick a booth and examine my food.

Ornate ordering area 

Plain dining area 

I ate at a total of five Halo and Kewpee locations on this trip. When I do a single-theme trip like this one, I like to break it down meal by meal.

Meal #1
Location: Halo Burger 800 Saginaw Street, Flint, Michigan
Order: Q P Burger, Fries, Iced tea

Halo burger offers a diverse array of sandwiches including a fried jalapeno burger, the local favorite olive burger, and even a vegetarian black bean burger. Since I’m studying the connection between Halo Burger and Kewpee, I opt to stick with a classic. The burger comes fully dressed on a split top bun with a circular quarter pound patty cooked on a flat top and covered in nondescript fast food grade cheese. The fries are thick cut and on the crispy side. Thick and crispy is a good combination that’s tough to come by. The burger is good, but not great. It’s thick, sparingly seasoned patty and abundance of sauces and toppings, make for a taste and texture profile that’s oddly familiar, but more on that later.

Whenever I’m covering a chain that sells an olive burger, I have to try one. I’m not especially fond of olives, but making myself order and eat them is something of an inside joke I have with myself. I’m weird. Plus I want to check out another Halo Burger while I’m in the area.

I don't like olive burgers, but I can't stop eating them.

Meal #2
Location: Halo Burger 2248 East Hill Road, Grand Blanc, Michigan
Order: Olive Burger, Michigan Cherry shake

The olive burger tastes like the Q P burger I ate in Flint, but with green olives on it. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but I have yet to fully appreciate the appeal of the olive burger. The cherry shake is a limited time menu item, and it’s awesome. It has just enough cherry flavor without being overwhelmingly sour or tasting artificial. With a little chocolate, I bet it would taste a lot like the chocolate shakes that Hot ‘n Now used to have that had a cherry chocolate flavor. I may try and get a half cherry half chocolate shake the next time I’m here.

Modern Halo Burger in Grand Blanc, Michigan

This location feels like a nondescript fairly modern fast food building and has a large indoor play area in the front, but has a relatively small dining area. Maybe it was the shoes I was wearing but the tile floors feel slippery, like dangerously slippery, but they’re dry. I suspect the cleanup crew used too much floor wax. I’m beginning to suspect no two Halo Burger buildings are alike. This building is of course drastically different than the downtown Flint building, and my usual Halo Burger, just off I-75 in Birch Run, is a brutalist monstrosity constructed out of ribbed concrete blocks. I’ll have to hit a few more locations soon and try and get a feel for their corporate architecture. The walls here are lined with old photographs of the early Flint Kewpee Hotel locations with signs carefully photoshopped to read, “Halo Hotel.” The Kewpee connection is acknowledged on a large poster that outlines a brief history of the brand, carefully filtered through a corporate marketing department to gloss over the disagreement over franchising that caused the split from Kewpee.

The original image hanging at the downtown Flint location.

And the altered one at the Grand Blanc location. (Pardon the glare.)

Brutalist Halo Burger in Birch Run, Michigan 

Overall, Halo Burger feels like a reasonably modern fast food chain. Inconsistent architecture aside, signage, branding, and menus all feel current. They’ve even started offering breakfast recently. Halo Burger seems to have most things that the national chains have. As mentioned before, it’s not a true broken chain, but the product of half a century of divergent evolution after Bill Thomas parted ways with the very broken Kewpee chain. Later in my trip I would note how little resemblance it bears to Kewpee. Even the Q P burger has only superficial resemblance to the burgers I would eat at Kewpee.

The downtown Lima Kewpee, a really neat building with an exceptionally unsettling mascot. 

The interior has the same retro look...

...but suffers from the same aesthetic flaw. 

I had a three hour drive from Flint to Lima, Ohio to let my Halo Burgers digest. Lima is home to three of the five remaining restaurants bearing the Kewpee name. The three Lima locations seem to be truest to the original concept that grew to a 400 location chain before World War Two. My first stop is the downtown location, which seems to be the oldest, a small prewar building, clad in porcelain steel panels, not unlike White Castle and White Tower buildings from the same era. The inside and outside are spotless and seem to be in great shape overall. Sadly, the immaculate condition of the building doesn’t begin to make up for the fact that there’s a larger than life naked toddler statue standing over the door, with two more in the two front corners of the dining area. The rubber mask burger king can step aside as the creepiest fast food mascot, because the Kewpee baby is much more disturbing, crucified on an invisible cross, staring at me with its dead eyes while I’m trying to enjoy a historically significant hamburger. I know it’s meant to resemble but be legally distinct from the Kewpie dolls that were popular in the early twentieth century, but it’s a cultural reference that’s lost of most living people and it strikes me as being in questionable taste at best when viewed through a modern lens. Speaking of lenses, I felt seriously weird taking pictures of all these nude infant statues.

Meal #3
Location: Kewpee Hamburgers 111 North Elizabeth Street
Order: Cheeseburger with mayo, ketchup, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, onion, tomato, and pickle, fries, Diet Dr. Pepper

In an interview shortly before his death, Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas stated that his favorite place to eat as a youth in Kalamazoo, Michigan was Kewpee, and to the casual observer, the restaurant empire he’d go on to create has more than a few striking similarities to the beloved restaurant of his early years. The burger I ordered had a quarter pound square patty, with no seasoning to speak of. While Kewpee has no default burger toppings and asks every customer exactly which toppings they’d like on their burgers, when you top a Kewpee burger with the default Wendy’s toppings, it tastes just like a Wendy’s burger. Specifically, it tastes like a burger from Wendy’s prior to when they changed their original burgers to the “Dave’s Hot ‘n Juicy” line a few years ago. The similar, but legally distinct Q P Burger at Halo Burger also tastes similar to a fully dressed burger from Kewpee. The similarities don’t stop there, however.

The mascot is just as unsettling on a burger wrapper. 

This slogan must have been written before the connection between cholesterol and heart disease was discovered. 

Meal #4
Location: Kewpee Hamburgers 1350 Bellfontaine Avenue, Lima, Ohio
Order: Frosted Malt, Chili

The dining room here is massive, full of bright orange knockoff Eames seating. The walls are made of brick with an odd shiny green glaze. The building itself seems to be from the early seventies, if not a little older, and has a bright yellow roof that would fit right in between a Howard Johnson’s and a Stuckey’s. There’s another giant naked baby statue standing against one wall. The place feels like the setting of some forgotten Stanley Kubrick movie. All three of the Lima Kewpee locations feel like relics of various bygone eras. The buildings, while beautiful and squeaky clean are far from modern. No combo meals are offered, and employees wear paper hats and aprons, not to be fun and retro, but because that’s what they’ve always worn. Everything about Kewpee seemed to have stopped evolving around 1970, right around the time when the chain was falling apart. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, I love a good anachronistic fast food experience, but in comparison to the thoroughly modern Halo Burger operation that evolved from Kewpee, it seems the two brands with common ancestry no longer have much in common.

Kubruckian dining area 

Seriously?

The ordering system here seems to be organized chaos. A woman working the counter takes my order while I’m standing near the back of the order line, and I’m called to the front of the line, cutting at least ten people when my small, simple order is ready. The chili is thin and not terribly spicy. There are kidney beans and it’s served with crackers. Had they added diced green peppers and onions to the chili, it would be virtually indistinguishable from Wendy’s chili. Dave Thomas infamously put chili on the menu at Wendy’s as a way to use leftover hamburger patties. It’s pretty clear that he got that idea from Kewpee and attempted to imitate their chili recipe, with a few added ingredients to make it similar but legally distinct. If you’re detecting a pattern here, you can probably guess why I was curious about the frosted malt. Served in a small drink cup with a spoon, not a straw, and light tan in color, with a mild chocolate flavor the Kewpee frosted malt is everything the Wendy’s Frosty wishes it could be. Where the Frosty is full of air, and slightly grainy, the frosted malt is smooth and dense. Every Frosty I consume from this point forward will taste like a cheap imitation of the Kewpee frosted malt.

Thanks to decades of marketing, Dave Thomas has the image of a wholesome, working class father, who found his way to success with his own original restaurant concept. In my opinion that narrative doesn’t quite match reality. When Dave Thomas was putting together his Wendy’s concept in the late sixties, Kewpee was falling apart. The attempt to modernize the business model led to the loss of locations and franchisees. The product was fundamentally good, but the brand had failed to evolve to keep up with the fast food boom that was happening in the sixties. The Kewpee brand was doomed to obscurity in the absence of a viable business plan. Enter Dave Thomas, the original Hamburglar, who opens up in Columbus Ohio in 1969, selling food that is similar to, but legally distinct from core menu items from Kewpee. With his background with KFC and Arthur Treacher’s, Thomas is familiar with franchising and marketing, and is able to become very wealthy selling Wendy’s as a modern restaurant with old fashioned food. Early Wendy’s customers in what had been Kewpee’s core market knew exactly what “Old fashioned” meant the second they laid eyes on those square patties. Robble robble indeed.

One last dining area, note the infants nailed to the walls for... reasons. 

Meal #5
Location: Kewpee Hamburgers, 2111 Allentown Road, Lima, Ohio
Order: Cheeseburger with pickles, onions, and mustard, pecan pie, Diet Dr. Pepper

Dave Thomas famously liked his Wendy’s burgers with only pickles, onions, and mustard, and my theory is he first ordered them this way from Kewpee, so I wanted to get a taste of the burger that inspired his similar, but legally distinct offerings at Wendy’s. It’s a good combination of flavors. Maybe I’ll start ordering my Wendy’s burgers this way. Also, I got pecan pie, because I like pecan pie. Kewpee had a few different pies available. I wish Wendy’s had similar, but legally distinct pies.

This was my favorite building exterior of the trip. Note the separate smaller yellow roof for the drive thru window.

The movie, The Founder, made the story of Ray Kroc’s creeping takeover of McDonald’s from the eponymous McDonald brothers common knowledge. I suspect the point in history in which Halo Burger and Wendy’s evolved from the relic that was Kewpee could also make for a fascinating piece of cinema. Hopefully the set designers could find a way to make the Kewpee statues significantly less creepy. If they don’t, it would go over about as well as the Wendy’s Superbar, which by the way was similar to, but legally distinct from, the Rax Endless Salad Bar.